


Liar

by psythewriter



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, amami ouma tenko hoshi gonta kirumi kiibo angie kaito are all mentioned, major ndrv3 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 11:05:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10829985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psythewriter/pseuds/psythewriter
Summary: It's all she can do anymore.





	Liar

**Author's Note:**

> vee im sorry

Kaede knows exactly what she has to do.

It’s obvious from the moment that the motive is presented to the sixteen students of Gifted Inmates Academy, that the mastermind must be caught, and Kaede will go to any lengths to achieve that.  She knows that an awful person like this can’t live. She knows exactly what she has to do.

Saihara is the only person there that she’s worried about. She can’t tell if he’ll approve of her actions, and she cares too much to hurt him. She wants to tell him about her plan, but the last thing that she wants to do is put the detective in harm’s way, so instead, she tells Rantarou Amami, and he joins her in the conspiracy against the mastermind. 

Amami is nice, and is calm enough to suggest that the trap is non-lethal. Kaede lies to him, saying she’ll make sure that no one is going to be seriously hurt. No one is going die. But that’s a lie, and she’s sure that Ouma would scold her if he wasn’t being flung up and down the halls by Tenko.

As Kaede heads up to the classroom, where she’s prepared to put her plan into action, she runs into the last person she needed to.

Shuuichi Saihara.

When the detective asks where she’s headed to, she says it’s her room and lies, because it’s all she can do anymore, isn’t it? She’s been lying ever since the motive was revealed - to Amami, to Saihara, to herself. Of course, he buys it, because he just has too much faith in her. It pains Kaede to know that going up to that classroom will completely change that.

But...even if Saihara is betrayed, Kaede knows killing the mastermind is the right the to do. She does her best to depart as quickly as possible, not wanting to Saihara to feel the heart-wrenching ache, knowing that she killed somebody, but his sweet laugh and small smiles tell her to stay. And she does.

They talk together for what seems like hours, something they’d found themselves doing often over the course of their time trapped in the school. Every time Saihara smiles, her heart skips, because it’s the happiest smile she’s ever seen, and he deserves to be happy. 

That’s when she’s reminded that she came here to commit a murder, and that Saihara will be anything but happy when he finds out what she’s doing. Ashamed of her selfishness, Kaede hastily excuses herself, and dashes away, ignoring anything that the detective says or does to stop her. She doesn’t want to hurt Saihara.

(but it’s all she can do anymore, isn’t it?)

Kaede slams the door of the classroom as she runs in, and makes her way toward the vent, brandishing the shotput. She hesitates for a moment, worried about how this will affect her, Saihara, everyone. But she knows it will do good in the end, right? This trap can’t fail. There is no way she can mess this up now.

Feeling reassured, Kaede throws the ball, turns away, and doesn’t look back.

~

The first person to find the body is Tenko, who can’t help herself from screaming. Her scream is loud - loud enough to attract more people to the site. The next to find it is Hoshi who tries to stay tough on the outside, but his sadness on the inside is entirely evident on his face. He waits for a comforting hand on his shoulder, but he never gets it, and instead sits on the outskirts of the room waiting for others to arrive. Gonta comes to them soon after, tears welling up in the large boy’s eyes. They fall one after another, dripping onto the floor practically making a slipping hazard. Kaede takes her time as she walks toward the library, while people like Kirumi and Kiibo sprint with worry in their faces, and fear in their eyes. 

Kaede finally arrives, but...she wishes that she hadn’t because…

...she didn’t kill the mastermind...

...she killed Saihara…

~

The investigation is long and winding, and it feels like days...weeks...months to Kaede, even though it’s simply a single hour. She’s just drained...so drained, because she never expected her plan to fail so horribly. When Kirumi asks her what she was doing, she lies. When Angie asks her how she thinks Saihara was killed, she lies. She barely keeps track of her endless lies, just spouting one after another. It’s all she can do anymore. When the investigation ends, Kaede is grateful that she doesn’t have to answer anymore questions...that she can stop lying in her answers.

She’s even more grateful when the trial ends quicker than she could have imagined.

It only takes a few minutes before she’s bombarded with vicious accusations from both Ouma and Momota. The former expresses his disappointment in her mediocre lying skills, while the latter rants about how much Saihara cared about her, and how  _ evil _ she is for killing him. Kaede agrees.

Everyone becomes convinced that she did it so quickly, and she’s glad. She’s chosen as the culprit with only three votes against someone other than her, Ouma. Kaede could only assume that Kiibo and Gonta were among those, seeing as how they tried to believe it couldn’t have been her right up until this moment. She was unsure of who the third vote was from, but when she saw a rare disgruntled expression on Maki’s face, she had seen everything she’d needed to.

Kaede tries to offer a hopeful smile when Monokuma declares her guilty, but trying to keep up her determined and supportive mindset that everyone there had believed in becomes impossible while she can barely keep her tears from bursting free from her eyes. When the chain drags her away from the fourteen people she had the audacity to call her friends, she hopes someone will reach for her...to save her, but she’s aware that none of them will.

She murdered the only person that would.

As the rope brings Kaede up and down and up and down again and again, Kaede can only think of what Saihara would think of her right now. She realizes that she probably doesn’t even know him well enough. She didn’t get to know him well enough.

Her cries barely heard above the horrendous melody of the piano, Kaede’s last thoughts are about how she killed Saihara, and how it’s all she did.

(what’s worse is that she didn’t)


End file.
